Avilion

by Robert Holdstock

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  PART • ONE - Jack at the Edge

  Wood Haunter

  Oak Lodge

  Beyond the Edge

  Huxley’s Shadow

  Between Worlds

  Iaelven

  Elf-shot

  Armour of a King

  Under-Realm

  PART • TWO - The Villa

  The Valley

  The Villa

  Yssobel

  Jack

  Painting the Past

  Game and Promise

  Ghost Rising

  The Crossing Place

  Parting

  Return

  The Crossing Place: Moonsilver

  PART • THREE - Yssobel in Avilion

  Armour of the King

  Yssobel in Avilion

  Palace of Green Porcelain

  Reflections

  The Sylvan Fortress

  Peredur and Christian

  PART • FOUR - Avilion Alive

  Fire Dance

  The Crossing Place: Crow Choice

  Field of Tartan

  The Riot of Her Blood

  The Riot of His Blood

  The Lake

  Won’t Tell

  The Fury of Survival

  The Time Machine

  Silver

  Silver Dreams

  Yssobel’s Last Song: The Crossing Place

  EPILOGUE

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Robert Holdstock

  THE MERLIN CODEX

  The Iron Grail

  Celtika

  The Broken Kings

  MYTHAGO CYCLE

  Mythago Wood

  Lavondyss

  The Hollowing

  Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn

  Avilion

  Ancient Echoes

  Merlin’s Wood

  The Fetch

  Avilion

  ROBERT HOLDSTOCK

  Orion

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  A Gollancz ebook

  Copyright © Robert Holdstock 2009

  All rights reserved

  The right of Robert Holdstock to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Gollancz

  An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group

  Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  eISBN : 978 0 5750 8826 9

  ISBN 978 0575 08301 1 (Trade Paperback)

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  www.robertholdstock.com

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  This ebook produced by Jouve, France

  To Sarah.

  Twenty-five years on from Mythago Wood, you are still

  cariath ganuch trymllyd bwstfil

  But now farewell, I am going a long way

  With these thou seest - if indeed I go

  (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) -

  To the island-valley of Avilion;

  ... Where I will heal me of my grievous wound

  From ‘The Passing of Arthur’:

  from Idylls of the King by Alfred Lord Tennyson

  The ghost is as the man

  ibid

  Echo: Mythago Wood

  Ryhope Wood is as ancient as the Ice Age, primal, undisturbed for twelve thousand years; and it is semi-sentient. As small as Ryhope Wood seems, it contains a vast world. Within its apparently impenetrable boundaries, legendary figures and landscape come alive, born from the collective memory of those who live in its proximity.

  In 1948, Steven Huxley returned to England from France, to his home, Oak Lodge, at the edge of this remote patch of woodland.

  His older brother Christian was waiting for him there. Their father, George, had disappeared into the wild two years before.

  George Huxley had discovered the secret of Ryhope Wood. He had called the ancient ghosts that lived there mythagos: the images of the myth.

  One of these figures of legend was the Celtic Princess, Guiwenneth of the Green. George and Christian Huxley had become entranced by this beautiful and feisty echo of the Iron Age, this ‘image of a myth’, after she had emerged from the edge. They had fought over her, but had lost her.

  Soon after Steven’s return, his brother also disappeared into the wildwood, trailing his father and searching for the woman he desired.

  But Guiwenneth of the Green re-emerged for Steven - and their love was sudden, genuine, and profound. Sadly, it was a short-lived love at the edge of the wood.

  Christian, aged by many years and remorseless in his search (Time is strange in Mythago Wood), returned with armed men and took his prize, leaving his brother for dead.

  Yet Steven survived, and he and Christian met again at the very heart of Mythago Wood, and in a bitter winter. Steven exacted revenge. Christian was dead. But so was Guiwenneth, cut down by one of Christian’s mercenaries. She was taken to Avilion, also known as Lavondyss.

  Steven held faith in her return, however, waiting at the top of the valley known as imarn uklyss: ‘where the girl came back through the fire’.

  He was rewarded - old love was reignited, and two children were the consequence, named Jack and Yssobel, both of them half human and half mythago.

  What follows now is a story of Blood and the Green.

  And of Resurrection.

  PROLOGUE:

  Yssobel

  The stone stood stark against the moon, towering over Yssobel as she stared at the monument from the edge of the wide glade with tears in her eyes. The journey here had been long, far longer than she had expected. There had been times when she had despaired of ever finding the true trail to this place. But she was here now. She had found it at last.

  Pale light illuminated the stone’s flanks, showing by shadow the old script carved there, a different tale on each side, four in all, four echoes of the life of a great man, and a great king.

  The monolith whispered to her, greeted her. As she walked towards it in the night, it seemed to lean slightly, as if to embrace her, the illusion of welcome.

  I’ve found you, she thought in triumph, and then gave voice to the words. ‘I’ve found you!’

  Yes, she was sure of it. This was Peredur’s Stone, the marker of the man’s grave. This was where her mother had died and been taken to Lavondyss; this was close to where her mother had returned, renewed and vibrant with life. This was the place of ending and beginning.

  Yssobel reached the stone. The smells of night and earth enveloped her. She touched the first of the cold sides, feeling the smooth carvings in the rough-hewn rock. She traced the patterns, her mind a dance of recognition as the images blossomed in her imagination.

  Peredur and the Nine Eagles. She smiled as she recognised a part of the legend that was her mother’s. It was a story with which she was very familiar.

  Walking round, setting loose her tumble of hair as she did so, she embraced the second flank.

  Peredur and the Song of the Islands of the Lost. This was strange. She didn’t recognise it, though she recognised the song. Her mother, Guiwenneth, had often sung it. But for all that she had learned and dreamed about Peredur, she had never heard of his link with this tale, these islands. She moved away from it.

  At the third face, her heart started to race a little: Peredur and the Shield of Diadora. This, she knew about: the shield that reflected the past, and if viewed carefully could show a glimpse, at the edge of its inner, polished
centre, a hint of what might come. It had been one of Peredur’s prized possessions.

  Yssobel stood for a long time in front of the fourth flank, that side of the tall stone that lay in moon shadow. Here she sang quietly, words composed whilst on her journey. When that small celebration was done, she whispered a chant of promise to her mother and promise to her father. She blew a kiss to her brother Jack, who would, no doubt, be following his own path, somewhere else in the land. She missed him. Then, with a smile, she reached to feel the carvings, tracing them as she had done with the others, reading the marks and spirals, her fingers so expert that they could have read them in complete darkness. But she frowned again as she traced:

  Peredur and Yssobel.

  ‘That can’t be right,’ she said to the stone. ‘I don’t belong to your time. This isn’t the rune that I dreamed. I dreamed of you at The Crossing Place of Ghosts.’

  But perhaps this was one of the changes that could occur in this world, she thought to herself. Perhaps this signified that Peredur would look after her on her journey inwards. It was a comforting thought.

  A dark bird, perched on top of the monument, suddenly stretched its wings and drifted silently away, across the clearing and into the forest edge. Yssobel saw it, but was not made apprehensive by it.

  She had been so engrossed in her inspection of the stone that she failed to hear the stealthy approach from behind. The first she knew of it was when her tumble of hair was yanked gently but firmly. Stifling her cry of surprise, mind and limbs suddenly sharpened, she drew her long-bladed Greek knife in a blur of speed and swung round ready to strike. She immediately relaxed and laughed.

  The face that watched her was benign; it blinked, sighed, and the horse turned away. I’m here too. And it’s late.

  The moon lowered, the glade darkened. Now Peredur’s Stone was a shadow against stars. Yssobel lay in her small shelter, wrapped in a long sheepskin, and stared and thought and remembered. She had fed her horse; the packhorse she had brought with her towards the heart of the wood had perished on the way, not from the exhaustion of carrying her supplies but from predation by the creatures that stalked the valley down which she had ridden. She was glad that Rona, her favourite - a small mare, with a long black and white mane, her flanks grey - had made it this far.

  Peredur and Yssobel. She hadn’t expected that.

  But she had dreamed long, long ago that the rune-marks would be there, the patterns, the codes that signified the tales; and when she had told her mother, her mother had cocked her head, stared at the child of five summers, smiled, and said nothing. A look that signified she was thinking very differently.

  The sun rose and Yssobel rose too, prepared herself and the horse for the day, then walked to where the sun was casting the Stone’s shadow. She looked along that shadow towards the leaning trunk of a broken oak - blown down by a storm wind, no doubt.

  That is where I go. That is where I go to find him.

  She led Rona to the narrow space below the tree, led the way through to find a narrow track that widened to a grassy trail. It might almost have been a road. The road was in a hollow. Tree-lined earthen banks rose on each side. She was puzzled; this wasn’t right. She swung herself onto Rona’s back and cantered forward, watching and listening, and she had travelled a long way, lost in her own thoughts, before she thought to slow down and rest the mare.

  There should have been fire here, marking the way through. She had seen fire in her dreams, and her father’s account of this place was that a wall of fire guarded the deepest of the lands in Ryhope Wood. But there was just the forest trail, and the sense that human hands had built the way. The world had changed. The wood had changed its mind.

  Yssobel rode for most of the day and was about to rest when she caught the scent of a lake. The wind had freshened. The smell of the fresh water was clear and sharp and clean. Intrigued, she pressed forward.

  The wind shifted and she stopped suddenly. Faintly, then more loudly, she could hear the din and clatter of battle. She kicked the mare on and the trail began to curve. The horse was straining slightly. She could smell the lake as well, and was thirsty. Yssobel hauled her back. The battle was very close now, and its sounds made her stomach clench and her senses sharpen. The beat of shields, the ringstrike of iron, the wailing departure of men, the screaming triumph of killers, the noisy protesting of horses ridden through the fury, these signs of vicious struggle waxed and waned on the air.

  Yssobel’s copper hair billowed out like a cloak behind her as the wind strengthened, bringing with it the sharp tang of blood, and she took a moment to gather it and knot it to the side, using a silver ring. She was about to kick forward again when a horse burst through the undergrowth above the bank and stumbled its way down and across the track. A man lay slumped on its back, arms dangling, features obscured by a small helmet that covered half his face, which now was red from a strike. As the horse leapt up the opposite bank, so he fell heavily to the ground, rolling back to the road. For a moment gleaming eyes watched Yssobel, a hand moved towards her. Then brightness became blur.

  She rode on. The battle was loud now, and she dismounted, crawled stealthily up the bank and through the sparse woodland until she could see the hill, and the swarm of men on that hill, the sky filled with streaming pennants and clouds of fine yellow hair, blowing across the site of battle, glittering elementals engaged in the fray.

  She saw the man at the centre of the action. His face-helm was black, his banner green. He was bloodied and raging. He rode with others as a troop, but even as Yssobel watched, so he was struck by a javelin, pushed back on his horse, then struck off it. Ravens rushed towards him and the struggle over his body became fierce. The tone of the conflict had changed. It became static, pressing, urgent.

  Yssobel pulled back. She had seen enough. But as she sat, huddled, at the top of the bank, she began to realise just what it was that she had seen. She looked towards the lake, remembering the stories she had been told by her father, remembering the dreams she had inherited from her mother. Quickly, she returned to the fallen rider and stripped the corpse of its armour and face-helm.

  Yes - she would stay here tonight, in hiding, and watch events unfurl.

  PART • ONE

  Jack at the Edge

  Wood Haunter

  The man materialised from the edge of the wood so suddenly that the two boys, fishing from the opposite bank of the brook, almost slipped into the water with shock. He stood midstream in the shadows for a while, the water bubbling around his crude soft leather boots. He was wearing buckskin trousers, had a jacket or cloak slung casually over his right shoulder, and a pack over his left. His filthy shirt was open to the waist, revealing a heavily tattooed torso.

  The boys scrambled back onto the bank and stared at the stranger, who met their look with a cool, pale, searching gaze of his own. His face was lean and lightly bearded, scars on the skin visible in places through the black hair. On his left arm a strip of white fabric, bulging with moss that dangled from its edges, was stained with red, suggesting a recent wound. He seemed unbothered by it.

  After watching the boys for a while he looked towards the spire of the church in Shadoxhurst, squinting against the sun.

  ‘Shadokhurze?’ he asked, still staring at the distant village. Though his pronunciation was strange, they recognised his meaning.

  ‘That’s right, mister,’ said the older of the boys, a gangling, ginger-haired youth who spoke nervously.

  ‘How far in paces?’

  The boys exchanged a confused, wide-eyed look. The younger, much smaller boy, said, ‘A thousand, maybe.’

  ‘Maybe a million,’ the other added.

  The man looked quizzically at each of them before his face broke into a broad grin. ‘Depends on the size of the paces, I suppose.’

  The boys smiled as well, one less willingly than the other.

  Now the stranger came towards them, tossing his pack onto the bank, bundling up his odd-looking jacket and
crouching down between them. He ran his free hand through the water as it flowed beneath him, towards the edge. He inspected the moss patch on his arm briefly, then glanced up quickly. ‘What do you call this stream?’

  ‘We don’t call it anything.’

  ‘It’s the sticklebrook. Do you know where it flows to?’

  The boys shook their heads. ‘Nobody does,’ said the older one. ‘Can’t follow it in. You try and follow it in and you end up coming back. It twists you about in there. I’ve tried it. It’s scary. When did you go in?’

  The man glanced up. ‘I didn’t go in,’ he said softly. ‘I came out.’

  ‘Came out of where?’

  ‘Came out of what’s in there. There’s a lot to see in Ryhope Wood. That is its name, isn’t it?’

  They nodded agreement. Then the older boy made a sound of surprise, his mouth gaping. ‘You’re one of the wood haunters! You’re speaking English, so I didn’t realise it. But that’s what you are. A wood haunter.’ He hesitated, nervous. ‘Aren’t you?’

  The stranger considered the question, then splashed water onto his face and slowly stood up.

  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. I don’t know what you mean by that. But you’d be amazed,’ he went on, ‘at what this little stream becomes a few thousand paces in. It’s very big, very deep, very rough. There are tributaries that run into it and I used a boat to get here along most of it. From inwards. Hauled it onto a sandbank in a beech forest, maybe four thousand paces from here. Hid it among rocks. The Muurngoth hunt in those places, not far from the edge. The rivers run in all directions; and they know how to trim a sail too. I don’t want to lose my boat.’